Mark Bocko, Distinguished Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and recipient of numerous University awards for teaching excellence, has been an ideal mentor for creative young engineers. His love of music is reflected in the audio and music engineering program that he spearheaded; it is one of our fastest growing majors. He directs our state-funded Center for Emerging and Innovative Sciences, which helps match companies with university researchers, and which played a key role in laying the groundwork for our successful AIM Photonics proposal. He Technical Director for the Center for Future Health, where he and his colleagues develop cutting edge devices that help individuals monitor their own health. And Mark is also co-founder and CEO of ADVIS, a high-tech start up that provides integrated sensors for imaging and dynamic signal measurements. Those, indeed, are ample achievements for a lifetime, but I suspect Mark has even more up his sleeve!

This year's winners of the Charles and Janet Forbes Competition, a technical business idea contest for undergrads, are: First place and $4,000 to Lucian Copeland ’15 ECE and Alexander Matthers ’15 BME of NullSpace. Second place and $2,500 to BME seniors Isabella Cazacu, Brittanie Kilchoer, Jennifer Park, and Melinda Vander Horst, and Jacob Bohannon (KEY) of SimuClage. Third place and $500 (three-way tie) to Teamo, including Nick Brown ’15 of Optical Engineering, Anis Kallel ’17 of Computer Science, and Pedro Vallejo-Ramirez ’16 Optical Engineering; CampusFly, including Ervis Vukaj ’16 of Financial Economics, Rikesh Thapa ’15 of Computer Science, Nicholas Falcone ’15 of Financial Economics, and Charlie Kelman ’16 of Computer Science; and Blackout Games, including Kedar Shashidhar ’15 and David Porter ’15, both of Audio and Music Engineering, and Dan Hassin ’16 of Computer Science.

David Heid, a masters student in Electrical and Computer Engineering concentrating on Audio and Music Engineering, who has received a $2,000 prize from The Center for Music Innovation and Engagement at the Eastman School's Institute for Music Leadership as winner of the 2015 New Venture Challenge. David was awarded the prize for the “Laptop Orchestra Live (LOL)” startup, which was recently featured on Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet Show. The prize will help David produce a new Arts Leadership Program course planned for Spring 2016 that will build another bridge between the Eastman School of Music and the Hajim School. Read more here.